“Well I’ll get straight to it. Since this is the only Fisher Island in Wisconsin (Roger indicates the map still displayed on the media feed of The Table Room), and then the only *Fishers* Island — plural — in the state is on a Hazelhurst topo map — that we’re talking about an exchange: Fisher or Fishers Island for New Island. I am such an exchange, after all, since I’m not Roger Waters but Roger Pine Ridge. And it has worked out all right for me. I’m here, aren’t I?”

“You are indeed,” affirms Bill. “And we’re glad to have you sitting at our Table. You are *The* Variant, as I might be *The* Bill. Interesting symmetry.”

“Is it?”

“Could be.”

Roger puts a hand to his naturally cracked lips. “Does this Ruby have to affect the change? Can you not do it yourself?”

“As you know, RPR, I am indeed queen of Collagesity, but only because Mabel is so involved in New Island that’s she’s rarely here. Once she returns — all this aberrant energy she feels is dealt with — then she’s back here and a battle shapes up. I need to know what side you’re on. I’d like you to stand with me, obviously. Not that your position at The Table is in doubt, it’s just…”

“So Mabel controls Ruby,” interrupts an engrossed Roger Pine Ridge. “Ruby, the girl of 15, of course, and not Rubi the Woods. No one can control the forest.”

Roger Pine Ridge is back in town, and in his old apartment next to SoSo Mall formerly shared with old girlfriend Cyberpaperdoll, who, you might recall, ran off with a younger, hipper dude named Bandit Boy during his stint in Iris in the heart of the Heterocera continent. Roger says he’s tired of toying around, as he put it, with our user Baker B. up in the real world, and was itching to get back to playing a “less pressurized, less constrained” part in the still evolving “Collagesity mythos” — again his words. Here he poses with the cutout of another, directly related Roger at the town’s Blue Feather Club: Roger “Syd” Barrett, his fellow bandmember during the early days of psychedelic mega-group Pink Floyd and its original driving force. The mantle of band leader passed from Roger (Syd) to Roger (Roger) in early ’68, as Syd’s mind gradually turned to mush. But you see his fingerprints all over later (and more commercially successful) Floyd in such albums as “Wish You Were Here”, “The Wall,” and, of course, the masterpiece of them all, 1973’s “Dark Side of the Moon”, whose main theme is elements of the world (constraints of “Time”, pressures of “Money”, etc.) that lead one to go mad (“Brain Damage”).

Roger Pine Ridge had his way paid out of the Iris “swamp village” by newly crowned continental queen Bill — The Bill. He chose to enter the real world first, but now leaves behind the old, old disagreement of Missouri vs. Arkansas as the heart of our US of A to focus on “virtual frivolities”.